Presidential Petition Hearings of the Supreme Court challenging DP Ruto’s victory as president-elect kicked off in earnest with submissions from ODM Leader Raila Odinga whose lawyers cast doubt on the final vote tally.
The Azimio presidential canditate’s lead counsel James Orengo told the seven-judge bench that the IEBC’s final tally of the votes as declared by Chairman Wafula Chebukati does not add up.
The Electoral Commision’s Chairman Wafula Chebukati declared Ruto winner with almost 7.18 million votes (50.49 percent) in the August 9 polls, against 6.94 million (48.85 percent) for his rival Odinga.
“There was deceit, there was manipulation and all these was premeditated and made possible by the attack, if I may put it that way of the IT structure of the electoral commission,” Orengo stated
He said that “The way that the commission was able to deal with the forms in uploading, transmission and others deleted from the system clearly showed that this election was rigged in favour of Ruto and we urge that you nullify the election because Ruto did not attain the 50+1 threshold.”
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In seeking to convince the bench of judges to nullify president-elect Ruto’s victory as president-elect, Orengo said the electoral commission contradicted itself when it first indicated that the total votes cast was 14,466,779 representing 65.4 per cent before it later indicated in the final votes captured in Form 34C as 14,213,037.
“If you look at the results as announced by IEBC and compare them with what is stated in Form 34C, and if you compute the number of votes cast for each o the four candidates, they do not add up completely,” Orengo said in his submissions for the main petitioner Odinga who wants Ruto’s victory as president-elect nullified.
“We are going to demonstrate that the number of votes cast, keeps on shifting as set out on Form 34 C,” he said, and invited the court “to calculate to prove that these figures do not agree at all.”
The Supreme Court has already identified nine issues to determine the outcome of petitions challenging the result of the August 9 presidential election, including whether any irregularities were substantial enough to nullify the poll.